SSC joins NEMC sports conference

Looking into cooperative swim team with Pinconning

STANDISH — The Standish-Sterling school board approved joining the revived Northeast Michigan Conference starting in the 2013-2014 school year during its April 15 meeting.

The school was the last to join the league, with the other schools involved — Pinconning, Tawas, and John Glenn — approving the proposal last month. The NEMC will apply to every school sport except football.

“We could potentially talk about football down the line, but it’s not a part of this for next year,” Superintendent Darren Kroczaleski said. “The time frame for it was not even discussed.”

He told the Independent in April that due to the size of John Glenn’s student body, the other schools would be hard-pressed to match the potential size of its football team in a league.

Kroczaleski said the district would need to pay a small conference fee, which would go primarily toward purchasing league trophies and medals for the champions.

Joining the league allows SSC athletes to play for those honors, and would also help with scheduling, as league games would be set before the rest of the game schedule.

Pinconning and Standish-Sterling have been unaffiliated with any other leagues since the original NEMC dissolved a few years ago when former member Ogemaw Heights joined the Big North Conference.

Tawas was a member of the Huron Shores League, but opted to join the NEMC after the other schools in that league joined the North Star League.

Kroczaleski also brought up a proposal to allow Pinconning students to swim as part of the SSC swim team starting next year, though the board will not act on the proposal until next year.

He said Pinconning approached SSC about forming a joint swim team after the school was unable to get enough students together to field a team last year. The school board there had already approved the proposal.

Board member Ron Bartlett proposed checking with Arenac Eastern and Au Gres-Sims to see if they would also like to join that agreement, in case any of their students were interested in joining a swim team. Neither school district currently fields one. Kroczaleski said it was something to look into.